Tom Rutledge, the chief executive of Charter Communications, has a vision for the future of the cable industry: “Two major players,” and he plans to be part of one of them, Wall Street Journal reports. Together with cable tycoon John Malone, whose Liberty Media took a big stake in Charter earlier this year, Mr. Rutledge is part of an effort to consolidate the cable industry. While his recent meeting with Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt to discuss consolidation didn’t yield any immediate fruit, pressures for more scale in the industry suggest this is not the last we’ve heard from him. Read More »

Losses on the tablet front may be the least of Barnes & Noble’s troubles. A little-noticed detail of its fourth quarter report on Tuesday was the retailer’s guidance that it expects comparable-store sales in its retail division to drop “in the high single digits,” thanks to a continuing shift away from print books to ebooks, among other factors. The WSJ looks at whether the retailer is also suffering from a by-product of its effort to broaden its store mix to include toys and games. Some publishers believe the range of titles it stocks is shrinking. The tactic might help profits in the near term, but it risks driving customers into the arms of Amazon.com Inc., the Journal says.

WHERE TO NEXT FOR CHARLIE?

Dish Network formally withdrew its tender for Clearwire Corp., WSJ reports, ending its monthlong pursuit of the Sprint Nextel-Clearwire empire. Dish had abandoned a separate bid for Sprint last week. The Clearwire offer had already been trumped by Sprint, which raised its earlier offer, so Dish’s withdrawal appears to be a bow to reality. Sprint shareholders voted earlier this week to approve sale of control of the carrier to SoftBank of Japan. The question now is whether Dish chairman Charlie Ergen will pursue another cellular carrier or try to strike a merger deal with satellite rival DirecTV, something WSJ wrote about a few days ago.

After sustaining heavy losses in its Nook business trying to take on Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. announced Tuesday that it would stop making its own color tablets, WSJ and NYT report. Instead, it will offer co-branded devices with third-party manufacturers and keep making the black and white e-readers. None of that bodes particularly well for B&N Chief Executive William Lynch, a technology veteran, or the company’s long-term technology outlook, analysts told the Journal. Meanwhile, the Times notes that talks about a possible deal to sell the chain’s bookstores to Chairman Leonard Riggio are continuing.

BEHIND FOOD NETWORK’S PAULA DEEN DECISION

Paula Deen had her long-awaited – and extremely tearful — sit-down with Matt Lauer this morning, saying she didn’t agree with the decision of business partners such as the Food Network and Smithfield Foods to drop her. “Would I have fired me, knowing me? No,” she said. But The Wall Street Journal reports that her future with the Food Network was in doubt even before her admission of using racist slurs came to light, due to sliding ratings and the changing tastes of food television viewers. Read More »

Warner Bros. consolidated responsibility for its TV and movie studios businesses under Chief Executive Kevin Tsujihara, after announcing, as expected, that its movie division president, Jeff Robinov, was leaving the company, WSJ and other outlets report. The reorganization marks a major shift for Warner Bros., which previously relied on individual executives to lead the TV and movie businesses rather than a CEO with hands-on oversight of both divisions, New York Times and Los Angeles Times note.

Mr. Robinov’s departure also comes shortly after Bruce Rosenblum, a longtime executive with oversight of the TV business, left the company earlier this year. Both were passed over for the CEO job in favor of Mr. Tsujihara. Variety highlights concerns about new internal tensions that could emerge as Mr. Tsujihara directly oversees a bigger pool of executives at the company. Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, suggests that Mr. Robinov might make a good addition for Fox’s TV studios business.

SAD MEN: Don Draper isn’t the only ad-industry executive under the weather. U.S. ad spending was down slightly for the first quarter, according to Ad Age and All Things D, citing data from Kantar Media. Broadcast TV and traditional print media logged some of the sharpest declines. But there was better news on cable, where ad spending increased 5%, and in the market for Spanish-language advertisements, which jumped more than 13%. One positive outlier in the world of “traditional” media was magazine advertising on tablets, which until now has been slow to catch on. Kantar notes the number of ad units in magazines’ iPad editions jumped 23.6% from the same period in 2012. Read More »

Investors’ remaining appetite for newspapers will be put to the test this week, as the final round of bids for The Boston Globe and the scheduled split of News Corp. are expected to occur, WSJ reports. One unanswered question is to what extent major newspapers can supplant fast-shrinking print advertising revenue from other sources such as circulation and digital ads, which are generally still less significant than the dying print business.Read More »